On Frank Pooler, Life, Love and Friendship

From David Mitchell's brilliant Cloud Atlas, which I just finished:

"If we believe that humanity may transcend tooth and claw, if we believe divers[e] races and creeds can share this world as peaceably as the orphans share their candlenut tree, if we believe leaders must be just, violence muzzled, power accountable, and the riches of the Earth and its Oceans shared equitably, such a world will come to pass.  I am not deceived.  It is the hardest of worlds to make real.  Torturous advances won over generations can be lost be the single stroke of a myopic President's pen or a vainglorious general's sword.
   A life spent shaping a world I want Jackson to inherit, not one I fear Jackson will inherit, this strikes me as a life worth the living."

* * * *

My mentor, teacher, college choir director and friend, Frank Pooler, died two days ago.  It was 33 years ago when I first was astounded at the sounds made by his CSULB University Choir.  I joined the choir after I left my home town, and learned more about life and music from him during my six years at CSULB than I have from anyone before or since.

But our relationship didn't end when I graduated and (coincidentally, the same year) he retired.  Shortly after, he bought a computer so he could begin the process of coalescing his memoirs.  For all his gifts, he was a mess with anything technical. So he invited me over to help him learn how to use the thing.  We would usually spend an hour or so going over some basic function, and follow it up with lunch, which he always paid for.  That was my pay - lunch.

Actually, that's not true.  My pay was the time I got to spend with him.  For the ensuing years, we would meet for breakfast or lunch most every Friday unless I was out of town or he had other appointments.  Each week he would regale me with stories from his youth and news of his friends, stories I never tired of hearing, even on the 3rd or 4th time through. We continued to meet even after he had mastered his computer, and his printer, and his fax machine, and his slide scanner, and his flatbed scanner, and his LP to MP3 converter, his e-mail or YouTube; rarely did I need to help him with technical problems anymore.

We would talk about movies, politics, TV, music, friends, old CSULB acquaintances, dogs, and books.  We talked a lot about books.  He would very often begin a breakfast conversation with "I just finished 'such and so', and I have never read anything quite like it!"  He never tired of reading and learning and soaking up everything he could.  A few years ago, he bought his Kindle, and his reading went into overdrive.  He could buy a book from his bed and be reading it 10 seconds later.  He often joked that Amazon must have thought he was their favorite customer.

In one of our last breakfast meetings two months ago, I told him that I had seen the film version of Cloud Atlas, and he told me that he had loved the book.  I got the book as a Christmas present from my wife, and I told him in one of my last e-mails to him that I looked forward to talking with him about it.

* * * *

The themes of Cloud Atlas, for those who are not familiar with it, are as many and varied as the seven stories included in it's pages.  They include (but are not limited to): violence vs. virtue, reincarnation, how are deeds play out long after we are gone, love, music, corporate and individual evil, and on and on.  As I think now on how the book has hit me, I realize that the excerpt above is the part that means the most to me.  If I substitute the name Grayson (Lynda's grandson) for Jackson, or any other child that I know, I find it is exactly the force that animates my life.  This is how I want to live my life.

Frank's enduring gifts to me - the music, the discussions, the deep love and friendship we shared - are not mine alone.  Since his death, the outpouring of emotion from friends and students has been sustained and intense.  We all felt, rightly so, that Frank forever changed our lives, and are grateful for every moment we had to spend with him.  And that is probably exactly the theme in Cloud Atlas that I would most associate with him: the good and virtuous deeds you do for others in the name of love will play out for generations after you leave this Earth.  Frank embodied that like no one else I have known.

I wish I could talk to him about that today.  I want to hear him say one more time "I've never read anything like it!"

I miss you, my friend.